Hummingbirds

I tell you there is nothing better than when my meal passes muster with my children. They aren’t terribly picky, but considering there are three of them, their individual pickiness can cause a bit of strife at any meal. We don’t force them to eat all of their meal when they claim something is yucky. But we do insist that they try it.

Try something new. Try it again to see if their opinion of the yuckiness changes. Every meal- at least three bites have to be taken.

Here’s the awesomely exhausting part of the “Try a Bite” decree. When a child doesn’t want to eat something, that child essentially shuts down from all attempts of changing his or her mind. Convincing said child to try a bite is challenging, to say the least. There is a lot of opposition, a lot of bargaining attempts (from the child) and inevitably a bit of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Now, here’s the awesomely irritating part of the “Try a Bite” decree. Eight times out of ten, the teary-eyed child reluctantly puts a bite in his or her mouth and it just sits there for a second…and then a smile creeps on the child’s face because it is, in fact, yummy like we’ve been trying to explain for the previous half hour.

Oh the humanity! You’d think we were trying to poison these children. This was the case with everything from pork tenderloin to oranges. I mean, who doesn’t like oranges?!

Now, all that said, I have a great measure of success that I absolutely love and once you read about it, you’ll understand the title of this blog post.

Two of my sweet babies are hummers. By that I mean that when a food tastes good to them, they go into a zone of euphoria and complete focus on eating. While in this state, they also begin a humming sound. It’s a near constant sound, confirming the approval of their taste buds and congratulating me with every bite they take.

So, for all the stubbornness to get a child to eat a bite of food and the promise that said food will not, in fact, kill them, there is often an undercurrent of appreciation that I can hear from the other children that confirms to me that I’m not a bad cook after all!